The Most Insane Megaproject You Never Heard About

0:00 In the 1960s, the US planned

0:02 to nuke Israel with hundreds of thermonuclear bombs.

0:05 And Panama.

0:06 And Alaska.

0:08 All in the name of progress, driven by a mad scientist,

0:12 to use the most destructive of weapons to… build things.

0:15 Excavate canals.

0:17 Carve out harbors.

0:18 Tap oil and gas.

0:20 This was Project Plowshare.

0:22 It kept the US busy for two decades,

0:25 burned hundreds of millions of dollars and exploded

0:27 dozens of nukes for a bright future, in the most feverish years of the Cold War,

0:32 when the world got terrifyingly close to blowing itself up.

0:44 Nukes for Peace Our story begins with the brilliant Hungarian physicist

0:48 Edward Teller– one of the key scientists of the Manhattan Project,

0:52 the colossal effort that led to the first nuclear bomb.

0:56 But almost from the beginning, he dreamt of destroying the world much harder.

1:00 “Traditional” nukes, like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki ones,

1:04 release energy by splitting heavy atoms, like uranium.

1:07 But these are rare, expensive,

1:09 and the resulting bombs are difficult to scale up.

1:12 So Teller lobbied for a different approach– unleash

1:15 the nuclear fire by smashing together hydrogen atoms.

1:19 That would allow for bombs thousands of times more powerful.

1:23 The problem was technically hard, but in the 1950s Teller solved it.

1:27 The terrifying new thermonuclear bomb made

1:30 Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like firecrackers.

1:33 Nuclear fire strong enough to end human civilization itself.

1:38 The Soviet Union followed quickly and a new

1:40 madness for destruction took over the world.

1:43 Teller was having the time of his life as he got to chase his nukiest dreams,

1:47 like a bomb so powerful that it would wipe out civilization

1:50 in one single strike– a real thing the US actually started working on.

1:54 We told this story before, if you want to watch it.

1:57 And as the perfectly sane man he was, Teller had other great ideas,

2:01 like nuking the Moon to show the commies who’s boss.

2:04 And if H-bombs could destroy the planet… maybe they could also reshape it?

2:10 The logic wasn’t entirely unhinged.

2:13 Humans had been using explosives for mining and engineering for centuries.

2:17 And H-bombs offered the same service with much more enthusiasm at a decent cost.

2:22 Why not use them to dig ditches and make holes at a planetary scale?

2:26 The idea of "nukes for peace" was also pretty convenient.

2:31 With public opinion increasingly opposed to the arms

2:33 race and ever more terrified by WW3,

2:36 nuclear engineering was a way to keep on testing

2:39 nuclear weapons without saying you were testing nuclear weapons.

2:42 So in 1957, the US launched Project Plowshare,

2:46 a bold plan to use nuclear explosions for peaceful engineering.

2:50 And who would be put at the helm?

2:53 Exactly.

2:54 Cutting Through Continents In 1956 Egypt had just nationalized the Suez Canal,

3:00 a vital artery for global trade and oil delivery to Europe.

3:04 So one of the first ideas of the new Build-With-Nukes doctrine

3:07 was to blast open a new one through the Israeli desert.

3:11 On the other side of the world,

3:12 the Panama Canal had long been in need of an upgrade.

3:15 Scientists explored extension routes and found they would need to remove

3:20 1.2 billion cubic meters of earth– 500 Great Pyramids of Giza.

3:24 A monumental task that would cost 6 billion dollars if done with shovels,

3:28 but only 3.1 billion with nukes.

3:31 Time to blast open a Pan-Atomic Canal!

3:34 But even Teller understood that, before nuking through continents,

3:37 you should start small.

3:39 So the first miracle of Project Plowshare would be a new harbor in Alaska.

3:43 In just a few glorious milliseconds,

3:45 five nukes with the combined punch of 170 Hiroshima

3:49 bombs would carve out a 500- by 200-meter trench,

3:53 opening the region to commerce and prosperity.

3:56 The local communities weren’t thrilled at the idea,

3:58 but Teller insisted that the dangers

4:00 of nuke engineering had been “greatly exaggerated”.

4:04 The major concern was radioactive contamination.

4:08 Canals and harbors were great,

4:09 but nobody wanted them glowing with radioactivity for thousands of years.

4:13 Luckily, Teller had a plan: nuking the land from below.

4:18 In a nutshell, nuclear excavation works like this.

4:21 You drill a hole a few hundred meters deep and place the bomb at the bottom.

4:25 When it goes off, the blast hollows out a cavern

4:27 in the rock and flash-melts its walls into magma.

4:30 The molten rock pools at the bottom, the ceiling collapses,

4:33 and the collapse ripples upwards until it reaches the floor,

4:36 where it forms a crater.

4:38 The result is a massive hole on top with the radioactive

4:41 debris sealed under hundreds of thousands of tons of rock.

4:44 With the theory looking flawless on paper,

4:46 the time had come to actually test it.

4:49 But before the government bombs anything,

4:51 let’s get some propaganda protection– just in case.

4:55 Our partner Ground News is a website and app built to help

4:58 you think critically about the information

5:00 you consume– a mission we fully support.

5:03 They curate news articles from across the globe,

5:06 adding context on political bias, reliability, ownership,

5:08 and summaries that highlight what each side is leaving out.

5:12 You can even compare headlines to see how bias shapes the narrative.

5:16 Take this story about Finland planning to lift its ban on nuclear weapons.

5:20 Some frame it as a prudent response to the state of the world,

5:24 while others warn of escalation.

5:25 Ground News also reveals "blind spots"– stories that only one side is covering,

5:30 showing you what your usual news feed is hiding.

5:33 As information bubbles are becoming the norm,

5:35 thinking critically about the news is no longer optional.

5:38 And Ground News makes it easier to do just that.

5:41 If you’d like to give them a try,

5:43 go to ground.news/nutshell, or scan the QR code on the screen.

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5:51 and directly supports our channel.

5:53 And now back to nuking for peace.

5:57 The Fiasco Begins Plowshare debuted in 1961 in the desert of New Mexico.

6:04 A nuke with the power of 3,100 tonnes of TNT was buried 360 meters deep,

6:09 in the heart of a salt deposit.

6:11 The goal was to explore a new idea to generate electricity–

6:15 the explosion would melt the deposit into a pond of red-hot,

6:18 liquid salt, whose heat could be pumped up to power turbines.

6:21 A hybrid of fusion and geothermal power, brought to you by H-bombs.

6:26 Above ground, hundreds of officials,

6:28 scientists and international guests had gathered

6:31 to witness the birth of a new era.

6:33 Everyone held their breath as the countdown ticked.

6:37 And then, with a distant thud, the ground shuddered.

6:42 Deep below, the explosion hollowed a cavern

6:44 the size of over ten Olympic swimming pools.

6:47 But Teller’s team had missed a tiny detail–

6:50 the salt contained far more water than expected.

6:52 Which turned into superheated steam that massively amplified the blast.

6:57 The hole used to lower the bomb had been

6:59 designed to collapse and seal itself after the explosion,

7:02 but the unexpectedly monstrous pressure broke through.

7:05 So a few minutes after the blast,

7:07 a plume of radioactive steam erupted from the shaft– damaging

7:11 cameras and instruments and bathing everyone in a strangely itchy sauna.

7:16 The US government tried their best to convince

7:18 everyone that things hadn't been that bad.

7:20 But for some reason,

7:21 the masses had a problem with clouds of radioactive fallout,

7:24 even from peaceful nukes.

7:26 But that wouldn’t discourage Teller.

7:28 So to show the world how cool H-bombs could really be,

7:31 he scheduled another test– one 30 times more peaceful.

7:36 In July 1962, while Cuban officials were visiting Moscow to negotiate

7:40 a missile deal that would almost spark WW3 three months later,

7:44 a thermonuclear bomb worth 7 Hiroshima nukes

7:47 exploded 200 meters underground in the Nevada desert.

7:50 This time the goal was to test nuclear excavation

7:53 itself and check how big the crater could get.

7:56 The blast displaced 12 million tonnes

7:58 of soil and hollowed out a gargantuan crater

8:01 100 meters deep and 400 meters across–

8:05 the largest artificial crater in US history.

8:08 But digging with nukes is tricky.

8:10 Bury the bomb too deep, and you’ll only get a disappointing dent.

8:14 Bury it too shallow, and you risk launching a radioactive cloud into the sky.

8:19 Which was exactly what happened.

8:21 Someone had miscalculated the depth of the explosion

8:24 and a plume of radioactivity punched through.

8:27 Fallout was detected as far as South Dakota and Illinois,

8:30 and panic broke out in Utah when radioactive iodine was found in milk.

8:34 It turned into one of the dirtiest tests on US soil ever.

8:39 Just One More Nuke Bro The years that followed saw more peaceful explosions.

8:44 And peaceful fallout.

8:46 Meanwhile, Teller's proposals got weirder.

8:49 Liquify tar sands in Canada, with nukes.

8:53 Blast a highway through the Sierra Nevada, with nukes.

8:56 Connect rivers in Mississippi, with nukes.

8:59 But the crown jewel of nuclear dreams was still the Pan-Atomic Canal.

9:03 A legion of scientists worked on it and plans got disturbingly far.

9:08 One of the top contenders was Route 17,

9:11 an 80-km trench across pristine Panamanian jungle that was short,

9:15 flat, pretty empty and perfectly nukable.

9:18 250 bombs with the power of 8,000 Hiroshimas would do the job.

9:23 43,000 people across 17,000 square kilometers would still have to be evacuated.

9:27 You know, just in case.

9:29 And shockwaves might shatter windows as far as Costa Rica and Colombia.

9:33 But what were such details in the grand scheme of progress?

9:37 So let’s rewind history… and press the button to see

9:40 what might have happened if Teller had got his way.

9:43 Ready to push the button?

9:46 3… 2… 1… boom The first round of nuclear salvos,

9:51 close to both coasts obliterates hundreds

9:53 of square kilometers of pristine rainforest in seconds.

9:56 A roaring success.

9:58 Unfortunately, a cloud of fallout catches the Pacific winds.

10:01 Weeks later, spikes of radiation are

10:04 found over the Caribbean and radioactive iodine,

10:06 cesium and strontium start to enter the food chains of both oceans.

10:10 Tuna and sharks become radioactive.

10:13 One option would be to stop.

10:15 But to have a radioactive scar across the jungle,

10:18 contamination of two oceans… and no canal?

10:21 Better push through.

10:23 So a second round of blasts goes

10:25 off in the central Chucunaque River valley– only

10:27 to find that the central part of the isthmus had far more clay than expected.

10:31 As soon as the rainy season hits,

10:34 landslides clog the new craters like a self-healing wound.

10:37 The choices?

10:37 Leave a mud-choked, glowing blister through the rainforest– or begin a colossal

10:42 engineering nightmare just to keep the jungle from landsliding onto the canal.

10:46 Not to mention the ecological apocalypse–

10:49 and the devastating PR victory that 120

10:51 megatons of Nuclear Peace over Latin America would give Cuba and the USSR.

10:57 Luckily, in our timeline the US blinked and began to sober up.

11:01 In 1970, a final report killed the Pan-Atomic Canal and, with it,

11:06 all nuclear excavation projects.

11:08 But Teller wasn’t ready to let go, so he turned to nuclear fracking.

11:12 Not because it made sense, but to keep Plowshare alive.

11:15 Just one more nuke and I will build the future, bro.

11:18 But several explosions later, the result was ultra-expensive,

11:22 radioactive gas impossible to sell.

11:24 In 1977, after 20 years and dozens of nukes across the US,

11:30 Project Plowshare was finally cancelled without reaching any of its goals.

11:34 No canal, harbor or tunnel had been built.

11:37 In hindsight, it’s easy to see how insane the idea was.

11:41 But at a time when WW3 felt imminent,

11:44 when kids were playing with atomic toys as mushroom clouds filled the sky,

11:48 using nukes to build a better future probably did feel like a great idea.

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